Robert Sutherland Smith started his City career the year before I was born. He is, I think, 157 years old. He and I have worked together for almost eight years at t1ps.com . He is my friend and he is a very funny and intelligent chap. He is now branching out to celebrate his 158th by doing some freelance writing over at TradingResearchPoint on FTSE 350 Income stocks. He is a great one for focussing on yield. RSS today looks at Aviva. I have never understood insurance stocks but, as I noted, RSS is a clever chap.
I saw that an analyst somewhere had suggested that Aviva (AV.) might wish to re-base its dividend payout – a polite way of suggesting a cut. The rationalist argument for such a development, if it were to occur, might include the obvious point that new chief executives coming to a corporate debacle to sort it out, often like to put all the bad news he ( or she) can find out for public consumption to distance themselves from history and provide the lowest start base possible for the rebuilding project. It only remains to add that Mark Wilson, after a long search, was appointed the new CEO of Aviva on the 21 November and took up his appointment on 1 January this year.
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